


here by the settled shadows

by frostbitten_cheeks



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2012, Angst, Ghosts, M/M, Multiple Universes Colliding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostbitten_cheeks/pseuds/frostbitten_cheeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ghosts linger. </p><p> <br/> </p><p>  <span class="small">(<i>phil meets two hundred and forty eight versions of himself by the time he’s twenty-three, and they never leave, trailing after him with phantom smiles and paper-thin skins that hold their stories inside.</i>)</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	here by the settled shadows

**Author's Note:**

> a 2012 christmastime fic. because apparently i’ve started an _unhappy christmas fics_ tradition, and this has been sitting in my folders for too long.
> 
> a quirky, strange, angsty little thing that started as me toying with realistic sci-fi and turned into some kind of elaborate metaphor for 2012!phil. warning that this fic mentions/deals with the vday vid, because i figured, you know. if i go mia might as well look taboos in the eye.
> 
> (link to this fic [on tumblr](http://literaryphan.tumblr.com/post/135932739991/here-by-the-settled-shadows))

 

In one world, Phil’s uncle takes him hunting as a child. This Phil becomes a vet, and he sits at the foot of the bed with running red hands and leaves marks on the duvet, blood and guilt and apathy. He isn’t fond of houseplants, and his cold eyes are unchanging as he glances over Phil’s shoulder at pictures of cats online.

Phil never does last his vet internship. In the end, he packs his things and goes back home, to his room and his bed and the red marks on the duvet. The Phil of the universe where he lasts through the internship still sits at the foot of the bed, judges. His judgement leaves dents in the cushions, but Phil bleaches the duvet white and no longer cares.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan turns off the torch and says, “Ghosts don’t _really_ exist, Phil,” the way he says everything to Phil nowadays. Phil spreads his legs eagle on the ground and leaves his torch on, watches the trail of light on the carpet that makes his insides feel weightless, somehow, something to focus on rather than the frost cut of Dan’s voice.

“They do too,” Phil says, even though Dan’s not listening. In the background the camera’s still rolling and Phil’s ghosts are swarming around it, loitering, but it won’t catch anything except the slope of Phil’s shoulders and the downturn curve of his mouth, and Phil’s stopped trying a long time ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In late July they move to London. They spend two days within bare walls and bare floors and bare skins, leave teeth marks behind, don’t talk after. Phil follows the beads of sweat on the back of Dan’s neck as they carry the boxes up the stairs and trips over a ghost’s legs in the hallway, almost bites his tongue off. 

His skin’s made of rug-burns and angry red, cracked right open. On Tuesday the lorry brings their beds and Phil spends the night trapped between piling ghosts, and in the morning Dan’s bedroom door is still closed, and Phil misses it, misses it, misses it so bad he can hardly breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ghosts linger. Ghosts linger at his side and linger in his room and leave lingering traces of translucent on his walls, his house, his hands. They never leave and he never asks – and so they stay. He doesn’t know another way of living.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan folds sharp-edged limbs into the corners of the table with a plastic bowl of cereal, says, “The new update of Skyrim is coming soon,” ignores the way he’s not said a word to Phil in days. Phil wraps jittery fingers around his coffee and shoves his jittery heart down his throat, says, “We should buy it with Bryony,” in a cardboard-flat tone, emotions bitten so far back his teeth are sore.

In one world, Year Nine Phil finds someone emptying their lunch into the school toilet, their back shaking under his shell-shocked hands. This Phil learns Psychology in uni, instead, and now he leans against the wall with rough cheeks and ink-stains on his white buttoned shirt, pushes his glasses back and chews on empty words, of the way Dan’s tightly-applied mask of a face doesn’t erase days of silence.

This Phil’s touch is terror-cold against the small of Phil’s back, and his empty words secure around Phil’s throat like a leech. Phil clinks the teaspoon inside his coffee just so there’d be something to fill the silence and pulls away from that Phil’s touch, retreats slowly to his room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In one universe, Phil falls when he rides his bike for the first time. In another, he’s allergic to pepper. There’s one in which he doesn’t get accepted to York and one in which he decided never to dye his hair, there’s one in which he ordered cappuccino rather than peppermint mocha in Starbucks that first week of September, when it started snowing last year.

In another universe: he can’t see ghosts. Phil knows this. He knows this because every road he crosses safely and every risk he doesn’t take is a world where he doesn’t, a world where he does, a world where he ends up here or ends up there or ends up being not at all. There’s a world for everything different and Phil can see them all, collects them like folded origami birds, pressed and delicate and safe in his pockets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Late October, someone finds the video. Late October, nothing real breaks and nothing real fractures but everything does, and Phil’s cursor hovers over his tumblr inbox, doesn’t click it open. The hands of the ghosts running through his body are cold, cold, ice through his bloodstream, but he calls a counsel and emails YouTube and sits with Dan on the floor of the hallway until it’s five in the morning, and the laptop screen’s bleeding text, he stopped feeling his legs maybe an hour ago.

There’s a foot between them, and there’s been a foot for a while only Phil didn’t know it could get worse. At five Dan goes to sleep, and he doesn’t extend an offer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan screams, and all of Phil’s ghosts stop and listen.

Phil covers his bleeding ears with metaphorical hands and widens his mouth into a smile long enough to make all the voices go away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the shop, he runs into a girl who wants his autograph and thinks even his avocado is interesting and asks him if they’re cooking a romantic dinner without missing a beat, shifts weight between both feet and steps over his ghosts without knowing.

Phil says, _we’ll be fine_ , and Dan says, _it’s not good enough, it’s not fucking good enough_ , throws his frustration against the walls. It’s not that Phil doesn’t care, it’s that the words coat the insides of his mouth sour and he doesn’t want to talk – and it’s not going away, he tells Dan, so stop bringing it up.

Dan can’t stop bringing it up. Dan talks to walls and Dan talks to himself and Dan talks to the internet, doesn’t realize that the difference in this is the internet talking back. Phil can’t stand Dan talking about this and can’t stand talking about it long enough to tell him to stop, so he shuts himself away with the ghosts inside his room and stares at his books until the letters are a smear of black.

Phil thinks maybe in one universe, this doesn’t happen. He thinks of this and thinks of maybes and realizes that perhaps this doesn’t happen in more than just one universe, and can’t fill his lungs with air, they’re too occupied with jealousy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not all days are bad. Some days Phil isn’t as afraid, and his mind is quiet as he wakes up and shoves the limbs of his ghosts away with his feet, bends and turns and folds them into the cavity underneath the bed. Some days he kisses Dan good morning and Dan doesn’t mention the voices of the people crawling on the walls of their flat and the walls of their heads, and everything is easy, for a moment, when Dan allows him to just pretend.

Not all days are bad. Some days Phil lets himself love Dan without thinking and Dan lets himself take things as they are without demanding answers. These days aren’t few and aren’t far in-between but they’re silent, somehow, between the echoes of the days that divide them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan brings his hat to bed and lies on his back next to Phil, touching elbows creating mismatched triangles. Phil walks his tired fingers over patterns in the sheets and doesn’t look at Dan, at the loose strings of his hat and the loose strain in his eyes.

These days, Dan looks at Phil like it’s painful. Phil still remembers when Dan looked at him like he was everything good, so he’d rather look away, claws his nails into the old memory like it’d make this one go away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fifty-six out of two hundred and thirteen universes, they break up. Phil sits in the corner of his room and shapes the numbers into his knees with pale fingers and breathes in sync with the ghosts around him. Across the hall Dan slams his door shut and doesn’t call for Phil, and all of Phil’s ghosts blink in and out of view around him, waiting. 

Phil doesn’t get up from the corner. He draws in his knees and clenches his eyes and can’t unsee the ghosts that surround him, crowding his room, crowding his mind. In one world he grew up in Birmingham, in another he lost his sight. In some of them he ends up here and in some of them he doesn’t but it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all. He’s there and he’s here and they won’t leave him alone and Phil can’t forget their stories but he wishes he could, because they’re not his stories and the what if’s are leaving scars behind on his petal-tender chest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(There is a problem, maybe, and maybe it won’t go away if they won’t make it, but –

Phil says, _okay_ , kisses Dan in the dark. It isn’t okay. Dan kisses back.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fifty-six worlds they break up. In November Dan tells him good morning but eats dinner in his room, and Phil sleeps with his bedroom door locked and his toes pressed against the feet of withering ghosts. Sometimes they kiss on the sofa in the office, sometimes the infrasound of the ghosts and the people and the audience keeps echoing in Phil’s head at three in the morning, and he never leaves his room, never unlocks the door.

The ghosts never shut up and Dan’s feet never stop dragging and Phil doesn’t know if this is the fifty-seventh universe, doesn’t know if they have anything left between them to break at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You won’t fucking _talk to me_ ,” Dan says, and he isn’t shouting, doesn’t shout, but Phil thinks it might be better if he would.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phil doesn’t hate his ghosts. He accepts them the only way he knows how, avoids their shoulders in the hall and steps over their outstretched legs when he leaves his room.

He doesn’t hate his ghosts, he only hates one. In one world, he tumbles down his house’s stairs and breaks his camera in late January of 2010, and for Valentine’s he sends Dan a teddy bear to India and nothing else. This Phil never learns of despair and paranoia, instead leaves discoloured patches on the walls when he moves with lighter steps, lesser worry. He’s not smarter and he’s not better but he’s easier, and the Phil who watched his step and never did fall down leaves that Phil in the darkest corners of his own room, avoids. He hates that Phil’s transparent eyes and transparent skin, hates the veins under his wrists, hates the static of his lungs, the way he holds himself straight. Not all days are bad but some of them are, and when Phil can’t bring himself to look Dan in the eye the Phil of that universe passes by Dan with outturned palms and lined spine, thinks of it nothing, and Phil exhales exhaustion and hates that Phil, hates him, hates him, hates him more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They film the radio Christmas show again and again and again. Dan’s unhappy with his sweater and unhappy with the tree and unhappy with their elves jokes, _maybe we should rewrite that_ , while Phil leans back against the shelves and says, “Santa won’t approve of your imperious character, Dan,” makes vague animal noises into his mic, pretends it’s on.

“Fuck Santa,” Dan says absently, settles back next to Phil with the new script in hand, and his knee jabs into Phil’s rib hard enough to make Phil feel his throbbing heartbeat but he doesn’t notice, tries hard not to, Phil knows the rigid jut to his jaw like he knows the shape of Dan’s lips on his.

Their regular show isn’t due until next year but Dan’s worried, worried, worried all the time. Phil doesn’t know how to be worried for so long without slipping so he isn’t, tries hard not to be, makes an innuendo he knows won’t make it in.

“You can’t say that on the radio,” Dan says, stony, and Phil doesn’t remember the last time he’s heard Dan laugh at his joke on camera, doesn’t vividly remember the last time he really heard Dan laugh at all. Phil can’t handle that, can’t breathe, instead turns away to put antlers on and mutters, “Again, we need another cut.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phil meets two hundred and forty eight versions of himself by the time he’s twenty-three, and they never leave, trailing after him with phantom smiles and paper-thin skins that hold their stories inside. He counts them every day before he goes to sleep, numbers the new ones, names the worlds he’ll never get to see.

Phil meets two hundred and forty eight versions of himself by the time he’s twenty-three, and in fifty-six of those Dan and he break up. In a hundred and eighty nine of those they stay together, in ninety-seven there’s never anything to begin with for Phil to find.

Phil meets two hundred and forty eight versions of himself by the time he’s twenty-three, but he only ever meets one where he’s never met Dan. Phil doesn’t know what this means, doesn’t know how to wrap his mind around Dan being a fixated constituent in his life. Phil only knows there’s a world for every twist and bend in the fabric of the universe and Dan’s in all of them, Dan’s a part of the fabric of Phil’s universe. Phil only knows loving Dan isn’t something he can unlearn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If I went to Mars I’d take you,” Phil tells Dan earnestly at PJ’s Christmas party, drunk off alcohol and music and fairy-lights. Everyone who’s there knows but Dan’s hand never touches his and the mistletoe’s left forgotten, and they don’t kiss there and don’t kiss at home and Phil never says _I love you_ anymore, not quite.

“I’d take you over anything,” he clarifies, finishes his drink, leaves that sentence hanging off a cliff and doesn’t talk about how the bottom is _even though it’s tough _. Dan hides his eyes away and says, “You’re so fucking weird, Phil, you and your space obsession,” like he doesn’t know this is Phil’s _I love you_ , like maybe it’s not enough.__

Phil’s drunk and Phil’s tired and Phil’s not sure if this is enough. Dan’s hand never touches his but their shadows on PJ’s carpet are one, and Phil thinks this must be enough, because how can love not be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 31st, 2012, the clock chimes midnight and Phil raises his glass with Dan’s, holds his gaze, smiles. Later that night they’ll fuck frantically against walls in dark corners and in the morning they’ll wake aching and hungover and sad, and the twist of Dan’s mouth will pull at Phil’s heart, the way he’ll draw his hands away. Now, the clock chimes midnight and they smile, and Phil’s ghosts hover at his shoulders, linger. One day he’ll stop wanting to lock the door and will start kissing the frown off of Dan’s December mouth instead, and the ghosts won’t be there when he walks into his room, not anymore.

Two, three, four years from now. It’s not now but it’s not never. They’ll be gone and he might miss them, might not, but Dan doesn’t leave traces on the walls and his fingers are long, cold, enough.

For now, the ghosts linger, but Dan still stays.


End file.
